“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win,” Karl Marx (Marx 1848).
Marx believed that the people at the bottom would rise because of absolute deprivation many would oppose that idea and would be more inclined to deal with relative deprivation, especially in social oppression that don’t solely focus on economical oppression. Marx believed that once those at the bottom (proletariat) were to the point of receiving the maximum amount of oppression from the bourgeoisie possible only then would they ban together to rise up. We can’t really blame Marx for not taking into account his thoughts on absolute deprivation when his Communist Manifesto dealt with mainly economics instead of social movements.
Many people around the world are watching what is and has unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri regarding the death of a young man by the name of Michael Brown. All life is precious, but he's just like Eric Garner, Ezell Ford, and countless others whose life were ended by law enforcement. Even though these men were unarmed, they were killed, not because individually they may have posed a threat, but because black humanity is not valued in a country that initially brought them here as commodities.
People in Ferguson are not just protesting and rioting over the death of one child, but over decades of frustration with the local police department in St. Louis County. When you have a group that has been eviscerated from traditional American experienceand made to look at themselves as subhuman not worthy of social equality.
Even though the city is compromised up of mainly African American residents (66%), the mayor and 5/6 of the city council members are white. Even though the population figures give off the notion of a strong black structure within the city, which is simply not true. The city still retains a white power structure, even though it isn’t reflected of the citizens that it governs. When incidents like this occur elected officials are not in tuned with the concerns of their citizens. The police force is also not reflected of the people. The force has 53 individuals on their roster, only three are black.
People in black communities, males especially are already have a disdain for law enforcement, which can be attributed to their legacy of brutality and racial profiling amongst blacks. Even though we can pinpoint “good” officers, the institution of law enforcement is rooted in the oppression of persons of color.
The killing of Michael Brown is the straw that broke the camel’s back, a sentiment that many black residents in the area might allude to. A community that has been deprived from a dream that they bought from the country they reside in finally became fed up and stood together in solidarity with more than hope, they raised up and demanded justice, not just for Mike Brown, but for the racial tension that the county has been plagued with over the years. These leading events brought on the protest and the revolution that we are witnessing now. Which can be explained by the theory of Relative Deprivation
James C Davies thought of social movements when it came to revolutions. He created the J Curve, this deals with rising expectations that explains why Marx’s theory didn’t support the reasons for why the oppressed would get involved in social protest and movements, instead of positioning themselves into roles of social and political activist. Davies argues with his J Curve model that people will rise up to join social causes after periods of gradual improvement in the economy start to slow down.
Even though economic prosperity is slowing down or decreasing the people’s expectations for where they should be at in life isn’t, those hopes and aspirations continue to escalate (Davies 1962). This curve shows how we get into the theory of relative deprivation.
Relative Deprivation in hindsight is the understanding that you are being deprived of something that you believe wholeheartedly that you should be entitled to.
People will start to look at those around them who have considerably more than them and will soon become discontent with where their lives are (Walker & Smith 2001).
Relative Deprivation doesn’t only deal economics, but it also includes political and social deprivation. The perception relative deprivation has dire consequences for behavior and attitudes, including feelings of stress, political attitudes, and participation in collective action. The theory was founded upon by Robert Merton, but one of the first formal and widely used definitions came from Walter Runciman who used four points to argue his interruption of Merton’s theory.
His four points were
1.Person A does not have X
2.Person A knows of other persons that have X
3.Person A wants to have X
4.Person A believes obtaining X is realistic (Runciman1966).
Those citizens Ferguson don’t have the law on their side like other residents so they understand the feeling of disenfranchisement in regards to what they believe they deserve. People will feel outraged and will have the sense of urgency to come together as a collective once they feel they are being denied justice, upward mobility to a higher status, or even a privilege. That is what happened to those residing in Ferguson and others who can understand the rage of the over policing of a community who feel racially harassed by the police. These people live in a nation where every 28 hours a black is killed by the police or a vigilante. Marx argued about absolute deprivation which states that people react merely off of just negative conditions instead of what they relatively have in place of what they feel they should have.
Political scientist Ted Robert Gurr gave three values in his book “Why Men Rebel,” arguing his point on different values that a man needs to be content and what happens when he is placed at a disadvantage in obtaining and/or maintaining those values. The included welfare values, interpersonal values, and power values. Welfare values included those that make physical contributions to life, interpersonal included those that directly correlated with satisfaction that we received from non-authoritative interactions, and lastly power values spoke of our environment influenced our behavior (Gurr 1970). Gurr wrote on page 58, “"Men are quick to aspire beyond their social means and quick to anger when those means prove inadequate, but slow to accept their limitations.” When a man see that he isn’t achieving the same level of affluence in society Gurr argues that biological he gets to a where he needs justification for this. This justification usually leads to blame of different organizations whether it’s a school system, government institution, or business. In most instances those who are doing this will place blame on prominent individuals within those organizations. Once you place this blame on others you are essentially becoming a victim of decremental deprivation, which basically states that you are placing the fault on other things that are taking away from your own opportunity of equality.
Gurr’s last value which was interpersonal, which called for status, communality, and ideational coherence. Which is important so that people can have a sense of identity, those in Ferguson and across America are denied that opportunity because black has become synonymous with bad. Gurr also writes in, “Why Men Rebel,” the notions of aspiration, progressive, and detrimental deprivation and how each can result in the gathering of frustrated people to help form a social movement.
When people assert the claim that we shouldn’t make this a racial issue, but a human rights issue we must not take that half-truth for face value. Of course anthropological research shows that there isn’t any biological difference between black or white people, but socially it does exist. Idealistically we should all be considered as equal and this should be a case of the over militarization of the police, but we must be conscious of why it happened here, in a predominantly black, low income suburb of Saint Louis, and not Beverly Hills, California.
We can’t not look past this a race issue, because we live in a country that doesn’t look past minority races. Black and brown cultural identity has been eviscerated to a level of extinctness in the terms of being embraced to the dominant society’s imagination, unless they can use it as a commodity.
Ferguson isn’t a unique place, many are spread out throughout the nation, we must now decide how do we stop another Ferguson from being sick and tired, of being sick and tired.
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